


let sanctuary start, all lost will be found (carry us home)

by thylionheart



Series: if my heart was a house, you'd be home [5]
Category: A Wrinkle in Time (2018), Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, Kything, Middle School, Phone Call, Post-Movie, Romance, Sharing Clothes, Thanksgiving, just a smidge it's not too angsty i promise, wOW I DIDN'T TAKE A MONTH TO UPDATE WHAT A SHOCK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 03:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15572757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thylionheart/pseuds/thylionheart
Summary: Meg and Calvin spend Thanksgiving nearly four hundred miles apart, and an admission is made.*not a standalone*





	let sanctuary start, all lost will be found (carry us home)

**Author's Note:**

> Wow! It didn't take me a month to update! Crazy!! :D
> 
> Alrighty, so...this is where it gets tricky. If you've read the sequel to "A Wrinkle In Time", "A Wind In The Door", you know all about kything. If you haven't read it, kything is a kind of communication, the basics of which are similar to mental telepathy (I would say personally that it's more of an empathic power than a telepathic one). It is something that comes naturally to Charles Wallace (which is how he's so in tune with Meg's feelings), as well as something that Meg and Calvin are taught in "A Wind In The Door"; though, Meg is told that she and Calvin have in fact kythed before, without even knowing.
> 
> In this fic, Meg and Calvin kythe accidentally; since they haven't been taught what kything is or how to kythe yet, the kything in this fic is still quite rudimentary.
> 
> If you still don't understand what kything is, there is a Wikipedia page on it with a bit more detail.
> 
> The title is from Sanctuary by Cris Williamson.

* * *

 

_“It doesn't matter where [Calvin] is, Meg. You've got to get it through your head that_ where _doesn't make any difference […] It’s why. And how. And who. […] You and Calvin often kythe without realizing it. And when Charles Wallace knows when something’s upset you at school, knows it even before you come home, that’s kything. Just be Meg. Open. Be. Kythe.”_

Proginoskes | _A Wind In The Door_ (8.179)

 

* * *

 

Stars glinted faintly in the sky above. From her bedroom window, Meg could spy Cassiopeia tucked behind the fronds of a distant palm. The perpetual chill of November had arrived, and cold sunk into the wooden walls of the attic.

Meg sat on her bed, clothed in flannel pajamas and fuzzy socks and a blue rayon hoodie that wasn’t hers. As per her promise, she had allowed her boyfriend to give her something of his own as a token of thanks for gifting him her old NASA hoodie. The material was soft and warm, so warm, and it reminded Meg of fingers entwined, of heat spreading from the lines of her palms all the way up her arm to her heart. She sighed and wrapped the hoodie tighter around her.

Calvin was gone. His parents had whisked him away the day before to visit his grandparents in Sacramento for Thanksgiving break. When he had told her at school on Monday afternoon, a sickening worry had filled Meg’s stomach and she hadn’t been able to finish her lunch.

“You’ll be back by Saturday, right?” Meg had asked him. They had been sitting in their usual spot under a maple tree next to the thin row of windows looking into the history classroom, a place that wasn’t necessarily secluded, but far less crowded than the cafeteria. They didn’t always sit together; every so often Calvin would join his other friends for lunch or a short game of basketball, and on those days Meg would sit alone under their tree, reading _Popular Science_ to pass the time. But even then, Calvin would still sometimes sneak away from his friends, either to surprise Meg with a kiss—or two—before returning to the court, or to spend the rest of lunch with her, simply because he missed her company.

“I should be.” Calvin had taken her hand. “I hope so.”

A student had rounded the corner nearby and, instinctively, Meg had drawn her hand away from Calvin. Despite her confidence immediately after their journey, it had been much easier for Meg to face her bullies in the safety of her own backyard than at school. Soon it became clear that her newfound friendship with Calvin was yet another reason for her tormentors to hate her, and, because of this, Meg had asked Calvin if they could keep the true depth of their relationship a secret. At first, he had been resistant to the idea—“There’s nothing wrong or embarrassing about _us_ , Meg”—but once the eventual subject of her meeting his parents had arisen, Calvin had conceded, finally understanding her fear. He wasn’t ready to reveal their relationship to his parents either, especially not with the harsh and judgmental things he had overheard them say about her father while he was still missing.

“I’m sorry.” Meg hated the reflexive fear that flew up into her throat whenever she thought they’d get found out, but she hated the way his shoulders drooped when she pulled away even more.

“It’s okay. You know I understand.”

“Will you be able to come over after school today?”

Calvin had shaken his head. “I have to pack.”

Now, as she watched the wind carry clouds across the nearly starless sky, Meg couldn’t sleep. She kept imagining all the horrible things his father could’ve said on the six-hour drive north, during which Calvin had been trapped in an enclosed space with no escape from his father’s verbal assaults and his mother’s apathy. And once he arrived? Meg didn’t know his grandparents, but she figured that people who had raised as horrible a man as Mr. O’Keefe were likely just as awful themselves.

It didn’t help that Calvin had stopped replying to her texts four hours ago.

Meg realized she had been chewing nervously on the drawstring of Calvin’s hoodie, and promptly tucked it out of sight.

There was creaking outside her door, the sound of someone putting just a smidge too much pressure on one of the floorboards. Meg knew what that meant.

“You can come in, Charles Wallace.”

Her little brother opened the door and entered the attic. Crossing the cold room, he scrambled onto her bed and shoved his feet under her quilt with a shiver. At first he simply joined her in staring out the window at the stars; then, after a few minutes had passed, he spoke.

“He’ll be alright.”

“You can’t know that.”

“And you don’t know that I can’t know.”

Meg shot him a puzzled look. Her brother smiled.

“Keep the faith.”

She hugged her knees and sighed. Charles Wallace seemed so sure. But all Meg could think about was everything that might go wrong. What if Calvin’s father hurt him again? He was four hundred miles away from the refuge of the Murry home—where could he go?

Charles Wallace replied to her worries as if she had spoken them aloud. “Meg, our home isn’t the only sanctuary out there.”

Before Meg could ask him what he meant, her phone, which had been sitting on her windowsill, started to ring. She scrambled for it and hit _Answer_ without even checking the caller ID.

“Calvin?”

“It’s me.”

Relief flooded through Meg. Beside her, Charles Wallace leaned in close to the phone. “Hey, Calvin,” he called.

Meg put Calvin on speaker as he replied to her brother. “Hey, bud. How’ve you been?”

“I’m fine, but Meg’s been a wreck.”

“Charles Wallace!”

“Sorry,,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’ll leave you two alone. Goodnight Calvin.”

“‘Night little guy.”

Charles Wallace kissed Meg’s cheek before leaving. When her door clicked shut, she turned off speaker mode and pressed her phone back to her ear.

“Hey.”

“Hey back.”

A flurry of words tumbled from Meg’s mouth before she could stop herself. “Is everything okay? Are _you_ okay? Was the drive up bad? Are your grandparents mean? Did—”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down, Meg. Take a deep breath, okay?”

She sucked in a short, huffy breath.

“I said a _deep_ breath.”

Meg rolled her eyes but obliged.

“There you go. Now, start over.”

“Are you okay?” Meg asked quietly. “Are you safe?”

“Right now, yeah, I am. I actually, um,” he let out an awkward laugh, “I’m at church.”

“Church? It’s ten o’clock at night.”

“Yeah, there’s a church on the same block as my grandparents’ house, and I snuck out and sat on the stoop for some peace and quiet. Apparently there’s a youth group going on, and someone saw me and invited me inside. We talked for a bit and then I asked if there was a phone I could use to call you.”

“Did your dad take your phone again?”

“My mom, actually. My grandparents think that teenagers are too obsessed with technology and started ragging on her as soon as they saw I have my own phone. She took it away to appease them, I guess.”

His voice sounded tired and strained, and she told him so.

“It’s been a long day,” admitted Calvin with a heavy sigh. “Really long. My mom and dad got into a fight on our drive up. Well, not really a fight. Mostly my dad yelling at my mom and then getting angrier when she ignored him. Then when we got to my grandparents’ house, my Nana got all passive-aggressive and rude toward my mom, which set my dad off again, ironically. My ears are still ringing,” he tried to joke, but his words fell flat.

“I wish I could be there with you.”

Meg could tell Calvin was shaking his head before he even spoke. “I would hate for you to see any of this, Meg. Besides, you’re here in spirit, and that’s what matters.”

“‘In spirit’?”

He chuckled softly, shyly. “I’ve, um, been wearing your hoodie all day. Wearing it makes me feel like you’re here even though you’re not. Also,” his voice grew a bit cheeky, “it still smells like you.”

“Ooph, I’m sorry.”

“Oh shush, you smell great.”

Heat flushed Meg’s face and she fell back onto her pillows with an incoherent mumble.

“What?”

“That’s such a weird thing to say. Is it weird that I think it’s weird? I mean, it’s so sweet, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so—so awkward! To talk about how someone _smells_.”

Calvin laughed. “Well, you smell like flowers. Like walking through a garden or standing on Uriel.”

Meg was thankful he couldn’t see her right now, couldn’t see her stupid grin or her beet-red cheeks. She tugged the hood over her shoulder and pressed her face against the soft fabric, taking a slow breath. All her muscles relaxed and her ribs seemed to soften as Calvin’s lingering scent filled her lungs. She sighed.

“Meg?”

“You smell like…like mint. I think. Minty but sweet too, and fresh. Eucalyptus, maybe?”

Somehow, she could feel him smiling. “Right on the nose. Oh—uh, pun not intended.”

Giggling, Meg rolled onto her stomach and propped herself onto her elbows. “I’ve been wearing your hoodie all day, too.”

He laughed again, softer this time. Silence fell between them. Meg could hear him breathing, and the sound comforted her.

Calvin was the first to break the silence. “I miss you, Meg. Like, really miss you. I wish I was spending tomorrow with your family instead of my own. I wanna enjoy at least one Thanksgiving with people who actually care about me.”

Over the line, Meg thought she heard sniffling.

“Oh, Cal…” 

“I just...I just wanna go home.” His voice was thick with tears she could not see. “To your house, I mean.”

“I know.” Her own eyes grew watery and she wiped at them with the cuff of Calvin’s hoodie.

Then a memory came to her, as fresh and vivid as it had felt while it happened, of a day several weeks ago when Calvin had joined the Murrys for dinner. He and Meg had sat across from each other, the full width of the table between them, and yet Meg had felt as close to him as ever as they wordlessly listened to her father’s story and her mother’s soft jazz humming in the background. The sunlight streaming in through the window seemed brighter and even the water Meg drank tasted cooler and crisper than normal. Everything was warmth and calm, an evening of joyful communion. As Meg closed her eyes and let the memory soak into her bones, she could feel Calvin’s presence as true as could be, and she thought that perhaps when she opened her eyes she would see him lying beside her.

“Meg?”

Calvin’s tone, oddly enough, was laced with a hushed incredulity. Meg reluctantly slipped out of her reverie and cleared her throat.

“Sorry, I zoned out. I was thinking about—”

“Sunday dinner, three weeks ago.”

Meg sat straight up. “Wait, yeah. How did you know?”

“I was thinking of the same thing. And then I thought—I felt _you_. It felt like you were here. Like, right here. Not just in spirit, but actually _with_ me.”

“I...I felt that, too. I felt _you,_ too.”

They were both quiet for a minute. Meg started fiddling with the drawstring again, wrapping it around her finger and then unspooling it, again and again. Normally, her confusion would crumble into frustration and she’d bluster about the scientific improbabilities of what they had just experienced. But that moment of togetherness had left her feeling as smooth and limpid as the cool waters of a mountain lake. She wanted to bask in the peaceful clarity, not doubt it.

During her father’s absence, Meg had often taken to watching and rewatching the video of his and her mother’s last presentation. It was a video referenced frequently in the media, either to put a face to the name or to present evidence of her father’s alleged madness. As the years passed, she had watched it more out of fear than longing, and the possibility of forgetting the sound of her father’s voice had prompted her to hit rewind over and over and over again, until she knew it all by heart.

But now, it wasn’t her father’s words that came to mind; it was her mother’s, from the same presentation:

_“Think about quantum entanglement. Two electrons once bonded together—in love, if you will—suddenly separated by a galaxy, but somehow still just as connected. An unbroken union despite being galaxies apart.”_

Calvin affirmed her thoughts. “I guess we should know by now that distance doesn’t matter, does it?”

Meg nodded slowly before remembering he couldn’t see her. “Yeah.”

Another quiet spell. As much as Meg hated to break the calm that had settled between them, she had another question she needed him to answer.

“Cal?”

“Yeah?”

“Are your grandparents nice? I mean, I know you said your grandma was mean to your mom, but are they mean to you?”

“They’re…brusque. Tactless. But they barely even speak to me. I think they just kinda see me as a side character in whatever game they’re playing with my parents. They haven’t once called me by name since I’ve been up here. Just, ‘the boy’ or ‘your boy’.”

“What do you mean, ‘a side character’? What game?”

There was a shuffling, then a sigh. “Ever since I can remember, my grandparents have kinda…set my parents up to be criticized. Especially my dad. Like today: they told us that they’d handle Thanksgiving dinner, and then got upset when we didn’t bring any of our own dishes. And my Pop complained about having to cook the turkey, but when my dad started to help he began grumbling about how my dad’s always been a horrible and impatient cook and how he’s gonna ruin our dinner. Whenever they attack my mom, it always feels like they’re indirectly attacking my dad because he married her. Kinda like an ‘I told you so’ type thing.”

Meg didn’t know how to respond. All she could think to say was: “That’s awful.”

“Yeah. Not even my mom can ignore them for long.”

“Y’know, sometimes I think you’re more of an aberration than I am.”

Calvin gave a short, confused laugh. “Oh? How so?”

“Think about it. Your father is cruel, your mother uncaring, your grandparents judgmental—and you’re nothing like them. Nothing at all. You’re so kind and gentle and caring. I can’t understand it.”

“I’m a sport.”

“You mean a jock? What does that have to do—”

“No, a sport. A biological sport.”

Meg could vaguely remember her mother discussing biological sports with Charles Wallace as the two sat watching a nature commentary one night, but she couldn’t quite remember what it meant, and she told Calvin so.

“In biology, a sport is an offspring that displays unusual dissimilarity to its parents.” He sounded as though he were reciting straight from a textbook.

“So that’s us, then. The aberration and the sport.”

“A match made in heaven.”

Butterflies fluttered in Meg’s stomach. His statement left her speechless and she buried her face in her pillow to muffle a squeak.

“Was that too much?” asked Calvin quietly.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t want it to be.”

“Neither do I.”

This time, the silence that stretched between them was wrought with an odd, charged tension. Meg found herself holding her breath.

“Meg?”

“Calvin?”

“I should go.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what she had been expecting—or wanting—him to say, but she felt herself deflate with disappointment and the tension dissolved.

“Yeah. They’re probably gonna close the sanctuary soon, so I’d better—”

Meg cut him off. “Wait, what’d you just say?”

“What part?”

“The part about a sanctuary. What did you mean?”

“That’s part of the church I’m in right now, the sanctuary. Y’know, the main room, where the congregation worships. With the pews and the stage and the altar and all that. Why?”

“Just...something Charles Wallace said earlier. He said, uh, ‘Our home isn’t the only sanctuary out there’.”

She heard him let out a short, baffled laugh. “Wow. How did he—”

“Don’t ask me. I’ve been living with him for the past five years and I have absolutely no idea.”

They shared a laugh.

“Hey,” Meg began once their chuckles died down, “Come over as soon as you can when you get back, okay? We can have our own little Thanksgiving with leftovers.”

“I will.”

“I hope tomorrow’s not as bad as you’re afraid it’ll be.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

“Goodnight Calvin.”

“Goodnight Meg. Sleep well. Love you.”

The line clicked dead. Meg sat frozen, her phone still pressed against her ear. Her heart skipped a beat, and then another and another; a slightly hysterical and breathy giggle escaped her lips and she covered her mouth with her hand. She grinned against the sleeve of Calvin’s hoodie, feeling as though she were back on Uriel, flying high in the sky, breathless and weightless and borderline dizzy.

_Love you._

 

* * *

 

When Calvin came home late Saturday afternoon, neither he nor Meg mentioned what he had let slip. They didn’t, however, pretend it never happened; as soon as Meg saw him walking up to their front door, she ran outside and kissed him shyly, unable to keep a giddy smile off her face. She could feel Calvin shaking from nerves, but almost immediately he relaxed into her kiss and sighed with relief.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! ♥︎


End file.
